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SDC V1, Chapter 4: Waking Up Again

“Good fuckin morning!” I snickered, as the other ‘Me’ rolled out of bed and stretched his arms out while yawning dramatically. It was a really weird experience. Unlike before, when I just had a terrible migraine, I actually felt fine.

It’s hard to say ‘we’, since even though he was standing up and looking back at me with a smirk hidden underneath his scruffy beard, I could also see what he saw. It was kind of like looking in a mirror. The reflection couldn’t do anything on its own.

Of course, there was also the question of who was controlling who? I personally like to think that our individual brains could control the separate bodies, while a single ‘Soul’ determined the more complex thoughts and decisions. I had gotten up, got something to drink, taken a shower and returned back to the basement while doing all my special OCD maneuvers so many times that I barely had to ‘think’ about it.

However, I had never woken up inside a woman’s body and then had a confrontation between the old and new forms. I stared at the bulge in his boxers, then looked at his hairy yet muscular upper body. Finally, I saw the horrible acne scars all over his chest and shoulders…

“What the fuck? What the hell happened? I totally remember breaking out real bad last night…”

Yes, that’s the thing I thought was strange. ‘His’ acne was gone. I started to realize that I had been suffering from that ‘curse’ for so long that, overcoming the cystic acne felt more surreal than suddenly growing a totally new person overnight.

“Maybe…” The male me coughed and cleared his throat, then continued in a relatively deep voice: “What if the acne transformed into ‘you’? Like it…”

“That’s fucking stupid.” I retorted, then frowned and asked “Why the hell are we talking to each other?”

“I don’t fuckin know? I usually just talk to myself… It kinda seems a little less insane when there are two separate voices, right?” He snickered, then turned around and started walking towards the stairs.

It was really weird to control two bodies at the same time. And no, it definitely sounds crazier if there are two different voices talking inside your head. You get used to it surprisingly fast though, or maybe that’s just me.

If I really think about it though, my normal morning routine usually involved me thinking about the things that I would do once it was over. For example, thousands of ideas were already squirming around in my brain. I needed to work on like ten different series, but I could usually only focus on one or two. Then I had to do some dailies on the MOBA I liked, along with the MMORPG “The Gates of Sidhe” and I had to check Facenovel to see if anyone messaged me… I was also reading like twenty different webnovels and binging three different Superhero shows.

“Honestly, I’m not sure how I survived with only one body before this…” I giggled, as I turned off the music and felt a familiar sensation in my throat. It was so weird. One throat was super dry, while the other was drinking lemonade.

Then I looked over at the small end-table next to me. It was to my right, and in front of the actual computer. There was a separate part of the computer desk, that was lowered a lot compared to the section that my screen was sitting on.

Anyway, on top of that tiny black end-table, was a plate closer to me and a bunch of random tissues on the far side. That end-table had a cabinet up top, and underneath was a little shelf with a ton of different vitamin containers on the side closest to me. Further away was some random junk, like sketch pads and a CD holder. Which I believe contained a ton of old video games, from back when people actually used physical DVDs and stuff.

“Shit!” I heard myself shouting and felt a horrible pain in my right pinky toe… That’s when I realized that maybe I was a bit too premature in trying to use two bodies at the same time. Thus, I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath in and out, I was able to focus entirely on my original body. Multitasking is great and all, but kinda pointless if you fuck up everything you’re doing, because you try to do too much at the same time.

“Woah, that’s so weird…” I looked around the kitchen and snickered. Then groaned after looking down at my swollen toe. I put down the empty glass literally inside of the one I used earlier, then noticed that my father was walking over towards the kitchen.

We were both about the same height, five feet and six inches tall, though he was sixty-six years old. So it wasn’t particularly strange that his skin was really thin. He was wearing a thick long-sleeved checkered shirt and baggy blue jeans. As he saw me he asked, “You stub your toe?”

“Uh, yeah, shit happens.” I sighed as he opened the gate and walked over towards the bathroom. He stopped for a moment, but I told him “I don’t need to use that one. I’m getting up now, gonna take a shower.”

“Nmm, your mother doesn’t work today… So she won’t need to get in there until a little later. Hmm, I could’ve sworn I heard you in the shower earlier?” He shrugged, then asked “The cat still in here?”

Then Midnight got down off his chair and ran over by the door, meowing constantly. I snickered as my father said, “Alright, alright Baby, don’t worry…” He rushed over to the back door, which was in a small detached room at the end of the kitchen. There was a stove with a big pot of water boiling on it, and a drier next to that. He first opened the inner door, which had to be unlocked with a big bolt above the handle, then opened the outer screen door. The cat rushed out before he could even open it very far, then he closed it and chuckled.

“That cat’s so cute…” I smirked, then cleared my throat and asked “Umm, Daddy… There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Do you need to use my debit card to buy something?” He opened the bathroom door and said, “I really gotta take a crap, so why don’t you go take a shower and we’ll talk about it later…”

“No, listen, this might sound weird but umm…” He closed the door before I could even finish talking, then turned the radio on, though it was just an annoying commercial. I sighed, “It’s not a big deal. I just have a girl living in the basement with me.”

My father cracked the door open a bit and asked, “Did you just say you got a car in the basement?”

“What the fuck? How is that even slightly similar…” I grumbled, then explained “A girl! I have a girl living in the basement with me. It’s not a big deal, just-”

“Michael, what are you talking about? I really gotta shit here, so can you please go away?!” Then he closed the door shut and I was left there, shrugging my shoulders.

I was honestly just afraid that he would see her and freak out. I was twenty-seven, so it’s not like I worried that they would be upset that I finally got a girlfriend after seven or eight years but… Well, my parents are really jumpy sometimes. If they suddenly saw a stranger after turning around or entering a room, they’d probably go “Ah~!” And they were old enough that I was afraid for their health.

Speaking of health… Around that time, I had a mild ‘gelatin’ addiction. Not the expensive name-brand stuff, but like, just the generic supermarket version that only cost about forty-cents a box. Of course, that still wasn’t so cheap when you considered that most people could eat two cups of gelatin in one sitting.

“Maybe it was the Gel? Like I ate so much gelatin that I formed another person? Naw, that’s crazy.”

I snickered as I moved the gate over to the side and left it there, against the bookshelves. Then I walked up the carpeted stairs, that weren’t quite full-length. Can’t even remember how many times I fell down them by accident because they were dangerously ‘short’.

When I made it to the top of the stairs, I saw my mother walking out of the bathroom in a purple nightgown. Speaking of short, she was literally only four-eleven. Less than five feet tall. Messy and long brown hair, greyish green eyes and a lot less wrinkles than you’d expect from someone in her sixties.

“Good morning.” I said, as she was walking over to my left. There was a black metal railing with towels hanging on it, and a small wall, so it was normally way too cramped for me to enter into that ‘Bird Room’. She had a huge computer desk in the middle of it, with a television alongside her computer screen. Behind where she was standing, there were bird cages lining the walls. Finches, a single dove, the parakeet ‘Beanie’, then against the wall to the right… The most annoying creatures in existence: Misty and Gilly. Misty the African Grey parrot was the worst. While Gilly could be just as loud if he wanted to, but fortunately, he was usually pretty quiet.

“Good morning Michael…” My mother smiled slightly, as she started to push back the tattered sheets that were covering the birds.

“Hello~! My Kaa~l!” Then Misty started making noise.

“Stop that, you Stinker!” My mother yelled at her, then started up her computer.

“Umm, Daddy was well, you know. There’s something pretty important I need to tell you…” I sighed, then asked “How would you react if I told you that I have a girlfriend?”

“What do you mean you have a girlfriend? You haven’t left the house in years. How the hell can you have a girlfriend or any friends?”

I frowned, “Mommy, I’m serious. Not only do I have a girlfriend but umm, she’s here, in my room.”

“Oh God, Michael, did you buy one of those stupid blow-up dolls or something?” Seriously, that was how unbelievable my story was. And that was only if she was just some girl I was dating… They’d have thought I went totally crazy if I told them the truth.

“She’s a real fucking person. Damn it, I just don’t want you and Daddy to freak out when you suddenly see some strange girl you don’t know in the house.” I snickered, then walked over towards the bathroom.

“Wait, you’re being serious?” She stood up and glared at me, shouting “How could you just let some stranger in the house without telling us anything?! God damn it, the house is a pig stye! How could you not give us any warning ahead of time?!”

“Alright, stop, calm down.” I grimaced, complaining “This is why I didn’t say anything to you guys. You don’t need to do anything special or clean up the house, okay? It’s fine, she umm, well… She’s basically homeless now, and an orphan, so there’s nowhere for her to go.”

“Michael, please tell me you didn’t find some mail-order-bride or something! She better not be some fugitive of the law… Or maybe she’s a scammer? How well do you know this girl? What’s her name?” My mother didn’t stop freaking out.